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The Traitors only has three contestants with Oregon connections on its fourth season, which released its first three episodes on Peacock on Jan. 8. But already they have proven to be some of the reality game show’s most essential players, stirring up compelling drama as they endure grueling physical challenges and psychological manipulation competing for a prize pot of up to $125,000.
Actress, reality TV personality and QVC queen Lisa Rinna grew up in Medford. Comedian and actor Ron Funches spent developmental years in Salem and Portland, while RuPaul’s Drag Race winner Monét X Change briefly lived in the Rose City before her TV debut while working for the Portland Opera. They might not be connecting onscreen over their Beaver State ties, but Rinna, Funches and Change have proven in just three episodes that they will be strong competitors sure to get even stronger viewer responses.
A quick primer for the uninitiated: The Traitors’ U.S. version is essentially a big-budget take on the summer camp/theater kid storytelling game Mafia. Killers lurk among the village, “executing” one participant every round. When the murder is revealed, villagers must vote to eliminate the person they most believe to be part of the Mafia. Some versions have characters like angels, who can try to save a villager, or cops, who can ask the game’s narrator if specific players are villagers or Mafia.
Actor Alan Cumming is this show’s game master, taking on an eccentric Scottish aristocrat persona as contestants schlep to the 19th-century manor Andross Castle—for how foggy and damp the evergreen forestry is, this show winds up feeling more like home than expected. Rinna, Funches and Change are joined by “gamers” from shows like Survivor and Big Brother and dating shows like The Bachelor and Love Island, along with women from Bravo’s Real Housewives franchises (Rinna famously representing Beverly Hills). There are random celebrities who like Funches don’t neatly fit these categories, including Olympic figure skaters Johnny Weir and Tara Lipinski, Millennial teen heartthrob Stephen Colletti (One Tree Hill, Laguna Beach) and Donna Kelce, mother of football players Travis and Jason Kelce (and therefore Taylor Swift’s soon-to-be mother-in-law, as The Traitors can’t help but mentioning each time she gets screen time). Real Housewives superfan and mayoral wannabe Michael Rapaport is also there, to nearly every castmate’s visible annoyance.
Want to know how our homegrown heroes fare, with as few spoilers as possible? Follow along with our Oregon-tailored recap coverage!
Rinna and Change are the first characters seen as cars arrive at Andross Castle, joined by Kelce and Survivor alumnus Rob Cesternino. Funches, meanwhile, arrives with Weir and Survivor alum Natalie Anderson. Rinna is shown connecting with fellow Real Housewife Dorinda Medley—a fan favorite who was killed first on The Traitors’ last season in a major upset—and Dancing With the Stars choreographer Mark Ballas, while Change cozies up to Kelce and Survivor winner Yamil “Yam Yam” Arocho. (Funches is not prominently featured outside the car, yet).
Cumming and a cadre of cloaked and masked cult members pick in plain view a Secret Traitor—a new twist likely meant to prevent Medley from getting killed again, in what would have been the show’s most hilarious stunt. The Secret Traitor picks the people who Cumming’s handpicked Traitors will get to kill, but they won’t know who each other are. He later picks Rinna as a Traitor alongside former Real Housewives of Potomac star Candiace Dillard-Bassett and Rob Rausch, a reptile handler who competed on Love Island. They get along well, even though Dillard-Bassett accidentally suggested that Rinna is a Traitor before she realized she was right. Rinna is considered something of a Bravo supervillain for her willingness to air her castmates’ dirty laundry, so Cumming’s choice and Dillard Bassett’s misfire are not total surprises.
The first episode’s main challenge took three teams (with one Oregonian each) to row boats on a loch hunting for a dozen coffins among 100 marked with prize loot. They must tow the coffins to a graveyard on an opposing shore, which will be placed in a contestant’s marked grave to both secure the money and place them at risk for murder (the challenges all feature devious twists like this).
Securing over $22,000 from a possible $34,000 prize, the teams choose Funches, Kelce, Ballas, Cesternino, Rapaport and Rausch to possibly sacrifice along with Big Brother winner Ian Terry and K-pop singer-songwriter Eric Nam. Real Housewives of Atlanta star Porsha Williams was narrowly spared from the chopping block after a prize coffin failed to land in her grave as the clock ran down, causing Rapaport to loudly complain to an unsympathetic Cumming. The Secret Traitor narrows their shortlist down to Rausch, Ballas, Nam, Rapaport and Terry. With Rausch as a functionally useless choice, the Traitors ultimately choose Terry.
The time between a murder, challenge and “round table” elimination ceremony affords contestants, called Faithfuls, to sniff out Traitors (the Mafia). Dillard Bassett sets Williams up by reminding her that Rapaport had earlier told Faithfuls that they should be leery of gamers and Housewives (who collectively are nearly half of all contestants). When Williams called out Rapaport, Dillard Bassett successfully manipulated her by making Williams believe she misheard what Dillard Bassett said—Love Island alumna Maura Higgins, who witnessed the exchange, doesn’t back Williams even though she is correct in her claim.
During the second challenge, contestants must haul three of their own on thrones through a forest back to Andross in under 45 minutes without time checks. Along with finding money, they are also looking for shield tokens to swap out places on the throne (whoever is pulled back to Andross receives immunity from being murdered). Rinna strategically takes up space with Dillard Bassett as lightweight women who don’t need immunity, but are outdone. Rausch finds a token, but gives it to Arocho citing a moral conflict. Arocho dramatically ousts Higgins, while ex-Bachelor Colton Underwood ousts Rinna due to his suspicion of her.
Funches proves surprisingly adept at influencing other contestants, which Traitors diehards know is a blessing and a curse. When he and Kelce hear Williams misspeak after Terry’s murder, they build what turns out to be a convincing case against her that ends up sparing Kelce and Rapaport. But when she is revealed to be a Faithful, suspicion turns on Funches, who has no choice but to admit the fault in his logic.
He doesn’t fare better by the third episode after Cesternino’s murder. An unusual morningtime round table reveals Funches’ strongest ally, Kelce, to have been the Secret Traitor all along. Given his proximity to her and his campaign against Faithful Williams, Funches allows himself to be locked up during the next challenge and risk being murdered, which does nothing to endear his castmates toward him. Change frees her challenge partner, Anderson, by stacking 10 asymmetrical goat skulls in a tower. Medley fails to free Rinna, who successfully convinces the others that she’s upset by this outcome.
Funches and Nam plead their cases blindfolded and tied to a tree in the third episode’s cliffhanger, as do fellow doomed contestants Caroline Stanbury (Ladies of London, Real Housewives of Dubai) and Kristen Kish (Top Chef winner). Rinna and her cohorts believe whatever choice they make will be chaotic, but hopefully she shows her fellow Oregonian mercy as we wait for next Thursday’s episode to drop on Peacock.
